I used to work for CSFB (now Credit Suisse) in London's Canary Wharf. It's the most I've earned in my entire career.

Unless you've worked for an investment bank you have no idea how much money they have. It's like a giant gulf-of-mexico-style money gusher that doesn't quit.

How do they make it? CSFB flies on the bleeding edge of what's legal and always have. I was there when Frank Quattrone was involved in the IPO of VA Linux. The share allocation resulted in the US vs Quattrone lawsuit. Imagine you facilitate an IPO and you get to hand out shares at $80 a piece to your buddies on and the first day it pops up to $300/share and you can sell - right then. http://bit.ly/cBMdqb

I was also there when James Archer, Jeffrey Archer's son was found guilty of manipulating the swedish stock exchange and banned for life. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1459638.stm

In investment banks there is what's known as the Chinese Wall. It separates investment banking from the brokerage divisions to prevent conflicts of interest. Imagine you have a bunch of guys buying and selling stock for the bank's account and another group of guys recommending to customers which stock to buy and sell. They're all in the same building, using the same elevators, the same mens rooms and the same lunch hall. Quick entrepreneurial quiz: Anyone see a business model there?

They take their licks though. I was there when the LTCM fund collapsed and they lost $600M. Also when the Russian economy collapsed and they lost another $600M. Layoffs? Nah - business as usual.

If you're a developer or ops guy and get tired of startups, I strongly recommend going to work for an investment bank. It's very very hard to get your first job - you're going to have to network your ass off or have a seriously hot resume - probably both. But once you're in, provided you're good at what you do, it's very easy to move between banks and promote yourself into better jobs in other banks or divisions.

So what the fk am I doing running a startup? Good question. I ask myself that sometimes. When you look at the opportunity cost from the "I could be in an investment bank" perspective it is scary. I don't have some magic answer or a bunch of bullet points. I guess what draws me to it is the fact that I own my own business. It's also completely honest. Your success is your own and so is your failure. Working in banking feels like cheating. Perhaps it is. But it pays cash and lots of it.

If they let me show up with massive hangovers, allow me to drink at work, don't care that I smoke inside and miss half of my deadlines. Sure. Otherwise, stop fucking using that term.

Great thing I'm my own boss, I guess.

I always groan when I see it in job listings. The handful of real "rockstar" programmers don't need to scan job boards.

I'm guessing what you're likely to attract with this kind of post is a lot of arrogant code cowboys that don't play well with others.

The truly financially successful people I know have figured out a way to outsource all of this type of mundane day to day thing, except for maybe something they enjoy as a hobby, like cooking. (I also know a weird guy who just likes ironing shirts.) It goes beyond this. REALLY rich people have executive assistants to do their mundane work related stuff too. But anyway, everyone I know who is rich has someone to clean their house, do their laundry, book them plane tickets, do their taxes, manage their money, field their phone calls, schedule meetings and other appointments, etc.

It's not lack of maturity to want to avoid all this crap... it's actually a big time sink and not anything that will get you anywhere in life. It's important to get done but as soon as you can you should pay someone else to do it. However, putting it all off to surf the internet is also the wrong approach. I look forward to the day when I'm rich enough to pay someone else to read hacker news and post comments for me.

Hookers and blow profitable of course.

I made that original comment. Thanks for doing the analysis I was too lazy to do! Your analysis jives with the broader point I was trying to make - in the past 15 years, finance has been the surest path to riches in America. It is not just at the level of the Forbes 400. During the real estate bubble, newly minted mortgage brokers (often coming from other fields such as car sales, they found selling debt far more lucrative) were taking home $0.5 million - and not just a few of them. I have had acquaintances in Goldman, at fairly low level in the org chart, who have been taking home similar sums in bonuses every year. I know Unix systems administrators in Wall Street who take home ~$300K/year - and these guys are generally very low in the Wall Street totem pole.

It has been the age of the financier for a while now. No, this is not capitalism at work; it is Federal Reserve policy. It allowed specially privileged entities to lever up (30x leverage in case of investment banks like Goldman or Morgan Stanley, 10x in case of hedge funds), allow them to speculate with easy money, and have them pay out huge bonuses in case of investment banks or huge carried profit in case of hedgies ... and finally bail them out when their leverage blew up on them, only to have them start speculating all over again.

At the end, the guy says "How is that possible?" and I'm thinking... "The Pirate Bay".

I'm sure I'm going to get flamed and/or down-modded for taking the contrarian postion on this. Shame on me for choosing to accept the challenge of being an adult in our modern society.

If you think that going to the bank, doing your laundry, and answering emails in a timely manner is some sort of accomplishment or difficult, then you need to take a look in the mirror and realize that you are looking at the problem. It's called "being responsible for yourself". Tough concept for many people apparently.

I'm 39, been married for 12 years, and have two kids. I choose to be responsible because my kids can't do their own laundry or buy their own groceries. These are 5 and 10 year-old kids, not adults. Am I perfectly organized? Not even close. But I don't sit here and justify my failures like the girl who writes that blog. Yoda was right: do or do not, kids. There is no try.

Before you get all mad, I understand there are people who have mental or physical illnesses that makes doing these everyday, routine chores difficult. These people have my sympathies and understanding. The rest of us have no excuse. Yes, I include myself in "the rest of us."

Yes, much of every day life is not fun. I don't particular enjoy being a responsible adult, but if the alternative is the kind of ranting, over-the-top situations in that blog post (and on that blog in general), I'll take being a responsible adult. Grocery shopping is hard? Responding to emails is hard?!? Going to the bank is hard?!?!? This person who lives on the internet cannot order groceries online, answer emails or pay their bills online? Oh, that's right, they can never be an adult. Because it's too hard or something. Okay, back to Facebook and rating pictures of cute kittens. I'm sure there is a "responsible adult" out there who "cleans up" after this person. Resenting it while doing it too, I'm sure.

Don't blame it on TV or the internet or the poor diet North Americans eat or the "bureaucracy involved in modern city life". Millions of other people are in the same circumstances or worse and somehow manage to rise above it all, and have fridges with food, clean clothes, and money in their bank account. And they do it all by themselves too.